SSH-KEYSCAN(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual SSH-KEYSCAN(1)
NAME
ssh-keyscan - gather ssh public keys
SYNOPSIS
ssh-keyscan [-v46] [-p port] [-T timeout] [-t type] [-f file]
[host | addrlist namelist] [...]
DESCRIPTION
ssh-keyscan is a utility for gathering the public ssh host keys of a num-
ber of hosts. It was designed to aid in building and verifying
ssh_known_hosts files. ssh-keyscan provides a minimal interface suitable
for use by shell and perl scripts.
ssh-keyscan uses non-blocking socket I/O to contact as many hosts as pos-
sible in parallel, so it is very efficient. The keys from a domain of
1,000 hosts can be collected in tens of seconds, even when some of those
hosts are down or do not run ssh. For scanning, one does not need login
access to the machines that are being scanned, nor does the scanning pro-
cess involve any encryption.
The options are as follows:
-p port
Port to connect to on the remote host.
-T timeout
Set the timeout for connection attempts. If timeout seconds have
elapsed since a connection was initiated to a host or since the
last time anything was read from that host, then the connection
is closed and the host in question considered unavailable. De-
fault is 5 seconds.
-t type
Specifies the type of the key to fetch from the scanned hosts.
The possible values are ``rsa1'' for protocol version 1 and
``rsa'' or ``dsa'' for protocol version 2. Multiple values may
be specified by separating them with commas. The default is
``rsa1''.
-f filename
Read hosts or addrlist namelist pairs from this file, one per
line. If - is supplied instead of a filename, ssh-keyscan will
read hosts or addrlist namelist pairs from the standard input.
-v Verbose mode. Causes ssh-keyscan to print debugging messages
about its progress.
-4 Forces ssh-keyscan to use IPv4 addresses only.
-6 Forces ssh-keyscan to use IPv6 addresses only.
SECURITY
If a ssh_known_hosts file is constructed using ssh-keyscan without veri-
fying the keys, users will be vulnerable to attacks. On the other hand,
if the security model allows such a risk, ssh-keyscan can help in the de-
tection of tampered keyfiles or man in the middle attacks which have be-
gun after the ssh_known_hosts file was created.
FILES
Input format:
1.2.3.4,1.2.4.4 name.my.domain,name,n.my.domain,n,1.2.3.4,1.2.4.4
Output format for rsa1 keys:
host-or-namelist bits exponent modulus
Output format for rsa and dsa keys:
host-or-namelist keytype base64-encoded-key
Where keytype is either ``ssh-rsa'' or ``ssh-dss''.
/etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts
EXAMPLES
Print the rsa1 host key for machine hostname:
$ ssh-keyscan hostname
Find all hosts from the file ssh_hosts which have new or different keys
from those in the sorted file ssh_known_hosts:
$ ssh-keyscan -t rsa,dsa -f ssh_hosts | \
sort -u - ssh_known_hosts | diff ssh_known_hosts -
SEE ALSO
ssh(1), sshd(8)
AUTHORS
David Mazieres wrote the initial version, and
Wayne Davison added support for protocol
version 2.
BUGS
It generates "Connection closed by remote host" messages on the consoles
of all the machines it scans if the server is older than version 2.9.
This is because it opens a connection to the ssh port, reads the public
key, and drops the connection as soon as it gets the key.
OpenBSD 3.5 January 1, 1996 2